Galaxy of Terror

Not to be confused with Galaxy of Fear.

Galaxy of Terror
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Bruce D. Clark
Written by	Marc Siegler & Bruce D. Clark
Produced by	Roger Corman
Starring	Edward Albert Erin Moran Ray Walston Taaffe O'Connell Robert Englund
Cinematography	Jacques Haitkin
Music by	Barry Schrader
Production company	New World Pictures
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date	October 23, 1981 (1981-10-23) (USA)
Running time	81 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1.8 million
Box office	$4 million

Galaxy of Terror is a 1981 horror science fiction film produced by Roger Corman through New World Pictures and directed by Bruce D. Clark. It was distributed by United Artists. It stars Edward Albert, Erin Moran, Ray Walston and Taaffe O'Connell.

Plot

The story takes place on two planets. The first is an Earth-like world called Xerxes. On it, two figures are seen playing a strange game. One, an old woman named Mitri, is identified as the controller of the game while the other, a male whose head is obscured by a glowing ball of red light, is referred to as the Planet Master. The two speak cryptically of things being put into motion, and the Master instructs Ilvar, one of his military commanders, to send a ship on a rescue mission to the other world, Morganthus, for a ship that has disappeared.

Without delay, the spaceship Quest blasts off to Morganthus. As it approaches the planet's atmosphere, it suddenly veers out of control; the captain and tech officer are able to do a controlled crash landing on the surface. After recovering from the crash, the mission team leave the Quest to search for survivors.

Crossing the landscape of the planet, they eventually reach the other vessel where they find evidence that a massacre has taken place. While wrapping up their survey of the ship, a high-strung young member of the team becomes increasingly terrified despite being reassured by his seniors. A short time later, while he is alone, he is killed by a grotesque creature that immediately vanishes, leaving only his mutilated body for the search team to find.

Back on the ship, the crew discover a giant structure that is the source of the energy that wrecked them. While the captain and two others remain on the Quest, Ilvar and Cabren lead the rest of the crew to explore the structure. One by one, the members of the mission begin to experience a growing sense of dread and terror in the same way the crewman previously killed had. Shortly after these experiences begin, each one is attacked by some kind of creature that is an expression of basic, primal fears -- tentacles, dismembered arms, inanimate objects, giant worms, shadowy figures.

On the Quest, crewman Ranger catches sight of Captain Trantor running through the ship as if being attacked, and on the security cameras he sees her spontaneously combust as she fires a weapon in an airlock. He and the ship's cook join the remaining survivors of the dwindling mission in the pyramid. Ranger begins to feel the terror effect, and is soon attacked by a double. He manages to fend the double off, regains control of himself while doing so, and the double fades away. He finds Cabren, the other remaining survivor, and tells him. Cabren then discovers that the ship's cook is really the Planet Master seen at the beginning of the film. The Master forces Cabren to confront all of the monsters that attacked the others; he does so successfully, and the Master tells him that he has "won the game." The Master then explains that the pyramid is actually an ancient toy for the children of a long-extinct race, built in order to test their ability to control fear. Angered, Cabren kills the Master's previous host body, but as the Master himself cannot die, Cabren becomes his new host.

Cast

• Edward Albert as Cabren, an experienced and cool-headed space veteran who is the film's main protagonist
• Erin Moran as Alluma, the ship's empath
• Ray Walston as Kore, the ship's cook
• Taaffe O'Connell as Dameia, the ship's technical officer
• Bernard Behrens as Commander Ilvar, the overall commander of the mission
• Zalman King as Baelon, the rescue unit's team leader
• Robert Englund as Ranger, the ship's second technical officer
• Sid Haig as Quuhod, crewman and crystal shuriken thrower
• Grace Zabriskie as Captain Trantor, the ship's troubled captain
• Jack Blessing as Cos, an inexperienced, frightened crewman

Production

James Cameron

While known as a "B movie king", Roger Corman has started the careers of many prominent Hollywood people with his films. Galaxy of Terror was one of the earliest films for director James Cameron, who served as Production Designer and Second Unit Director on the film. It was the second Corman film on which Cameron worked as a crewman, the first being Battle Beyond the Stars (1980). Working on a tight budget, Cameron's innovative filmmaking techniques came to the forefront. In one scene, Cameron was able to figure out a way to get maggots to wiggle on cue by developing a metal plate onto which the maggots were placed, then ran an electric current through the plate whenever filming began, causing the maggots to move energetically about. His ability to find low-tech solutions to such problems reportedly made him a favorite of Corman and eventually allowed him to pursue more ambitious projects. Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) was an important inspiration for Galaxy of Terror and Cameron would later direct the sequel, Aliens (1986). Optical FX Supervisor Tony Randel, who worked with Cameron on Galaxy of Terror, commented on the Shout! Factory DVD release that Aliens looks like Galaxy of Terror in many ways.

Taaffe O'Connell and "the worm scene"

The commentary on the 2010 Shout! Factory DVD release includes R.J. Kizer, one of three editors of the film. Kizer reveals that the originally scripted version of O'Connell's "Dameia" character would see her die topless while being stripped and consumed by a monster. Producer Roger Corman, however, had promised financial backers of the movie a sex scene involving O'Connell. This led to Corman re-writing her death so that Dameia would be confronted by an "id monster" from her own mind, in this case a 12-foot (3.7 m) long maggot complete with slime and tentacles. The re-write included full nudity and far more explicit sexual content, including simulated sexual intercourse during which Dameia, lying underneath the giant worm and covered in excreted slime, can be seen and heard reacting first with terror, then forced sexual arousal, to the monster raping her. Helpless and betrayed by her own mind and body, Dameia perishes as she's driven to a fatally intense orgasm.

After informing director Clark and actress O'Connell about the changes and having both of them balk, Corman decided to direct the entire scene himself. He hired a body double for O'Connell to shoot the full-nudity sequences, parts of which made the final cut, even though it is still O'Connell in front of the camera for almost the entire sequence. The completed film was submitted to the Motion Picture Association of America film rating system (MPAA) for review. The sexual content of this scene was considered graphic enough by their standards that it was initially given an X rating, a rating which existed at that time that was used with films containing content (usually sexual) for adults only.

Kizer then made some small cuts to avoid the X rating. In the commentary, he states that the cuts were of two types. The first type involved brief shots of O'Connell's face expressing "rhapsodic and ecstatic" looks that too obviously indicated forced sexual arousal. The second type showed lewd "humping" motions by the giant maggot that too realistically simulated sexual intercourse occurring with the nude Dameia ensnared underneath. None of the cuts were longer than one second in length and none altered the sequence of the scene. However, they were enough to avoid the film receiving an X rating. The final released scene in film and VHS versions still contain segments of both kinds of shots, indicating that the cuts were probably made at either end of those sequences. Several countries still found this too explicit and either required the scene to be deleted entirely or denied the film a theatrical release. All later authorized VHS/DVD/Blu-ray/Steelbook releases of the film in Europe, America and elsewhere contain the scene as it was released in its final, R-rated version. The X rated clipped materials themselves were lost over time and are not included in any release. The scene can be seen again, in part, during the opening credits of a later Corman produced film, the 1988 remake of Not of This Earth directed by Jim Wynorski and starring Traci Lords. The scene has nothing to do with the content of that film, but is part of a montage from earlier Corman films shown during the opening credits. The audio in this version of the scene is done by another, uncredited actress.

The scene is discussed on the commentary of the Blu-ray Disc release more than any other aspect of the film. Clark, the director, admits that Corman's insertion of the scene, which Clark adamantly opposed, is what ultimately made the film a commercial success. Corman, in an older interview, states that the character of Dameia as re-written had a fear of sex as well as a fear of worms. O'Connell, in a separate interview with Femme Fatales magazine, interpreted that Dameia was frightened by her own sexual desire to completely submit to someone or something powerful, which the phallic, tentacled monster lethally provides. O'Connell also relates in the commentary how physically challenging the scene was and how the maggot prop made for the film, which weighed in at over a ton, almost collapsed on top of her at one point, which could have potentially killed her.

Release

The film was originally released on VHS and Laserdisc by Nelson Entertainment. Up until 2010, Galaxy of Terror did not have an authorized region 1 (North America) DVD release. There was a remastered and authorized Region 2 (Europe) Italian disc available from Mondo Home Entertainment released in 2006 which is now out-of-print. The lack of authorized discs for so many years has led to numerous unauthorized copies of the movie being sold online and elsewhere.

On July 20, 2010, Shout! Factory released Galaxy of Terror on Region 1 DVD and, for the first time, on Blu-ray Disc. The release also contains cast interviews and behind-the-scenes information on a variety of aspects.

The film was released in Germany in a dual Blu-ray and DVD uncut 2-disc Limited Edition mediabook from BMV-Medien Entertainment on April 19, 2012. The film was also released in Japan on Blu-ray from Stingray distribution on September 27, 2013 and contains the original English language version and a Japanese dubbed version both in Mono DTS-HD Master Audio and also includes Japanese subtitles.

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 33% based on 12 reviews, with an average rating of 4.8/10. On Metacritic the film has a score of 38% based on reviews from 5 critics, indicating "Generally unfavorable reviews". Galaxy of Terror has typically been reviewed as one of a number of Alien ripoffs that appeared in the early 1980s, but it has also been credited with itself influencing later, more mainstream films such as Aliens (directed by James Cameron) and Event Horizon.

External links

• Galaxy of Terror at IMDb
• Galaxy of Terror at the TCM Movie Database
• Galaxy of Terror at AllMovie